The iconic blue jeans market

Levi’s Sustainable Development

Nowadays, the jean is surely the star of the wardrobe, but unfortunately it’s also the most polluting item of clothing at its confection. Indeed: huge amounts of water, pesticides and chemical dyes are truly involved in its production. One can say that the price to be on top of fashion is very heavy to pay for our planet!

Fortunately, even the big brands have become aware about their environmental impact, and have well understood that communicate on these progress could be very positive in terms of brand image. This is the case of Levi with its famous process « Water Less » set up earlier in 2011.

Levis changed its manufacturing process, enabling them to save from 20% up to 88% of water regarding the fading step.

The brand also asked customers to participate themselves by changing effort their habits: they recommended washing jeans with only cold water when they are not stained and wash less often in general. In order to draw your attention, just a little calculation dated from 2011: if all the brand’s fans had decided to wash their jeans only once every two weeks instead of once a week, the economy would amount to 756,725,738 litters of water (even if actually, we’re not currently capable to reckon the fair amount realized since the beginning of the project).

What about the Carbon footprint of the brand?

After stopping with sanding techniques in 2010 (which had made thousands of sick workers), Levi’s significantly decreased its water consumption and is also involved in other initiatives such as being totally transparent regarding their carbon footprint. Indeed, the brand has clearly announced its data about the ecological footprint of its jeans since 2011.

Other sustainable progresses for the brand?

Nowadays, Levis goes on with their range entitled: Waste Less! The concept? The hessian of these jeans partly comes from recycled plastic bottles of water. Aware of the US laxity about ecology, the brand decided to mix this “garbage” element with cotton in order to find a new material.

Moreover, they engaged not to use organic elements for their packaging or accessories such as wood or paper.

In a nutshell, while Levis is still a best seller in the market in 2014, one can see that progresses are truly implemented to their manufacturing processes. It’s clearly encouraging and they knew how to “hide” the fact that they’re very greedy in terms of natural resources (water … etc). Such a change should show the path to smaller brands …

If you want to learn more about Levis’ good resolutions, please click right below !